I work on http://tenderapp.com, a customer support system that Aptfolk uses with a lot of their clients.
Ash Ponders, the founder of Aptfolk, was doing support for Atebits Tweetie back when I first heard about them, as well as a number of other higher profile Mac and web apps.
They've done a great job with everything I've seen and are working on extending out a number of of services like high-end screencasts and video work, as well as documentation writing (something EVERY developer hates to do).
I've been doing professional customer support for web applications for over 6 years now, not to mentions the countless moderator rolls and communities I've been involved with over the years. This is definitely a market that's been long overdue. It's probably one of the most difficult roles we have to hire for here at http://entp.com as a small company with a tech savvy user base. Not only do you have to talk the talk and be fairly tech savvy, you have to understand and adapt to different types of users and cultures.
Culture is hard to teach though, and for an independent developer to be able to offload support quickly when things grow to people who have a clue what they are doing right out of the gates, that's a huge win.
I work on http://tenderapp.com, a customer support system that Aptfolk uses with a lot of their clients.
Ash Ponders, the founder of Aptfolk, was doing support for Atebits Tweetie back when I first heard about them, as well as a number of other higher profile Mac and web apps.
They've done a great job with everything I've seen and are working on extending out a number of of services like high-end screencasts and video work, as well as documentation writing (something EVERY developer hates to do).
I've been doing professional customer support for web applications for over 6 years now, not to mentions the countless moderator rolls and communities I've been involved with over the years. This is definitely a market that's been long overdue. It's probably one of the most difficult roles we have to hire for here at http://entp.com as a small company with a tech savvy user base. Not only do you have to talk the talk and be fairly tech savvy, you have to understand and adapt to different types of users and cultures.
Culture is hard to teach though, and for an independent developer to be able to offload support quickly when things grow to people who have a clue what they are doing right out of the gates, that's a huge win.